Journey to wild divine

Meditation has never been this easy before! When I first heard of the game "Journey to wild divine" I was intrigued. Control a game with your brain? Further investigation told me it wasn't so much the brain as it was your breathing, heartrate and the conductivity of your skin that were the instruments with which the game is operated. Using biofeedback in a fun game, what a charming concept. Deepak Chopra was involved in creating the game which further peaked my interest. He writes about some of the more interesting concepts of the new age, human potential movement. I was all seet to learn self control and meditative techniques while having fun. I had to have the game!

For any serious gamers a caution is in order here; It's a great game if you're patient and wanting to meditate in a funloving way. The game however is not suitable for any mpmorph, rpg or adrenaline junkies. Unless you're looking for a break away from the hack and slash type of gaming, stay away; this is not your kind of game. But if you're into beautiful experiences, strolling through landscapes of great beauty and learning to control your breathing, practise mindfulness, this is for you.

I've played for a few days now and I'm learning to make balloons go up and down with the power of my mind, aiming my bow in a zen-like meditative manner and oh joy: I've built the stairway to heaven. Playing the game daily is improving my life too, which I can't say about the rpg's I usually play. Where those games help me escape from reality, this one helps me better prepare for it.

A brief personal history of computer use.

How important has the computer become? Shockingly!

First time I ever blogged, about two years ago my internet connection froze on me. I was amazed at my own reaction...

I was talking with my friend Angie about it when we went out to dinner the other day. I've known her since highschool and we sat and talked about old times, having a good time. Her husband was the very first person I knew who had anything to do with computers. They had a Commodore 64 with a matrixprinter with the chainfeed, remember those?
I recall how impressed I was: You could type something and correct it and then it would print it all out without any typo's. For all you younger people who grew up with computers: the 64 in commodore stands for 64kb, the entire memory of that computer. A far cry from today where a 4 gigabyte memory stick is in practically every pocket.

Personal computers have only been around some 20 years. Angie and her husband gave me my very first computer ever, a 268 from IBM. Green letters on a black screen, floppy disks, WordPerfect, Windows 3.0, they are all ancient history now. Angie remembers reading an article back then about a way in which computers could be tied together to form a network. The article stated that it should be possible to do this worldwise. Those were wild futuristic notions...

So I started my blog two years ago and a computer failure was enough to completely ruin my day. I went to a friends house and typed up this blog on her computer immediately. On another occasion my monitor broke down. That was at 7.00 PM. By 9.00 PM I had replaced it with a brand new flatscreen. Lot's has happened in the past 20 years and like many others I have noticed that I've come to depend on the computer, perhaps more than I should.

There is a part of me that "lives" on the internet and that is looking for selfexpression. The balance between my "real-life" personality and my "netizenship" is sometimes hard to find. I use the fact that I work through the internet as a counsellor as an excuse, but it's no more than an excuse. I can hardly imagine life without a computer, internet and cellphones.
How did we get by in the olden days, some 10, 20 years ago?

Helpful hint:
"Change is inevitable, except from a vending machine" ~Robert C. Gallagher